


Après

by Squintern



Series: Radius [4]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 02:29:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5112911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squintern/pseuds/Squintern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Eames has to do is wait for Arthur to choose a place to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cairo

Dom is silent. Arthur is tense. They avoid working with more than one or two other people at a time. By now, everyone knows to only accept jobs with Arthur and Cobb if they have nothing to lose. Eames has kept track of them for almost a year, keeping to himself and accepting very few jobs. He watches them come and go from tiny work places, watches them take the most reckless jobs, watches Dom grow wearier by the day. He watches Arthur disappear behind a wall of stone. When he runs into them again, he’s just finished a job in Jeddah and decided to pass through Cairo on the off chance of catching sight of Arthur. He hadn’t planned on actually running into him.

There’s a new intensity to Arthur. He’s sharper, even more put together than he was before, if possible. It hurts to look at him, the way he’s almost vibrating out of his own skin yet still managing to keep everything contained behind a solemn face. As Arthur blinks up at him in the low lights of the bar, Eames realizes he hasn’t seen Arthur honestly smile since James’ birth. He hasn’t seen him happy since James’ birth. He joins Arthur at the bar and pays for the next round.

When they collide, it’s not so much the transcendent revelation that Eames imagined it might be, and more a grim inevitability. Arthur clutches him like he might fall off the face of the Earth if he’s not holding on. He bites into his skin and rakes his nails down his back, hurting Eames as though it might help him erase some of the hurt in his own heart. When he throws his head back, it’s not in ecstasy, and the cry that escapes is more a sob than anything else. But still, he doesn’t shed a tear. And after, Eames holds him so tightly his arms ache but still he can’t stop the shaking.

When he wakes in the morning, the bed is cold. Arthur leaves no trace. Not even the pillow smells faintly of him. Eames holds his totem tightly in his hand for hours, letting the sharp corners of the cufflink draw blood, reminding himself that it wasn’t just a dream.


	2. Paris

Both Arthur and Cobb have learned to disguise their sharp intensity. Cobb still can’t dream without a perversion of Mal chasing him back to the surface and Arthur still doesn’t smile. He fakes it well enough, giving Ariadne encouraging half smiles throughout the day to keep her working and even mustering up some semblance of a laugh when Eames teases him. It still hurts to look at him, though. For Eames, having known both these men before the tragedy, it’s painful to see them still so lost without Mal. Arthur has always been slender, but Eames knows that the size of his waistcoats has gone down and he avoids even rolling up his sleeves if he can help it.

They continue to come together at irregular times. Between Cairo and now, whenever they felt another’s presence in their radius, they would seek the other out for a blessed moment of solitude where Arthur could forget that he was constantly being torn apart between his duty to Phillipa and James and his duty to Dom, and Eames could forget about the sudden dark turn that had brought them together like this in the first place. Sometimes, as Eames watches Arthur shake apart beneath him, he wishes he had never met Arthur. Never knowing how deeply he could love is a small sacrifice in the face of seeing the man he loves being ripped to shreds in front of his eyes. There’s barely anything left of the young man who had shared his umbrella on a Tuesday in Seattle. Eames still loves him.

And this job. The intriguing pull of trying his hand at inception again was too much to resist. He knows if Arthur is working point, there’s no way this won’t work and he wants to be a part of the team to pioneered dream sharing again. If he closes his eyes, he can almost, _almost_ , imagine he’s back in the old days. Ariadne has dreams like Mal’s and sometimes he thinks he can hear the warm tone Arthur had used with Mal directed at Ariadne before he, too, remembers that this young student is not his oldest friend. Arthur even shares a cigarette with him. The silence as they smoke is heavier than it used to be, but it’s still familiar enough to ease the ache sometimes. He tells himself this job will work, they will get through it. He tells himself he’ll finally tell Arthur when it’s over. It’s been long enough.

But then they go under and everything goes to shit. Everything that Mal never was appears as Cobb descends through the levels. Arthur misses key information. The threat of limbo lingers constantly over all their heads. Yet still Arthur pushes forward. Montreal remains the only job he never finished and he seems determined to keep it that way. Eames’ confidence in him never wavers, even as his eyes slip shut in a hotel room, leaving Arthur alone with an army of dangerous projections just outside the door.

He’s never been more grateful to feel rain on his face as he assumes Browning’s face again and pulls himself out of the river in the first level. If he squints, he can see Arthur, Ariadne, and Yusuf pull themselves out a little ways down. Dom is not with them. He reiterates his promise to himself, but gives it a condition. Only if Dom comes back. Only if Dom comes back. Please let Dom come back.

When they wake, there’s a mad scramble for totems. Eames clutches his and watches the others. He sees Yusuf breathe a sigh of relief when he unfolds the old photograph. He sees Ariadne run her fingers over a gold chess piece, flicking it over and standing it back up, over and over. He sees Arthur, very near to him, roll a red die across his tray table, but he has the sense not to look at what it lands on. He sees Arthur watching as he turns the cufflink over and over in his hands. He sees him absently finger the ones on his own wrist, possibly wondering whatever became of the twin to the diamond and platinum set he stole for himself all those years ago. When he glances at Eames’ hands again, the cufflink has disappeared.

The crushing relief he feels when Dom Cobb opens his eyes makes him forget his promise. He shakes his head at the lucky son of a bitch and sees the hint of a real smile cross Arthur’s face and he doesn’t remember what he was going to tell Arthur until he’s on a plane back to Africa.


	3. San Francisco

Eames hasn’t seen the children since Los Angeles. He’s never properly met James and Phillipa certainly has non memory of him, but from the way Dom introduces him, someone must be telling them stories. He’s still a bit put-out that Dom insisted on bringing them in the first place. It’s extremely unsafe. Even though San Francisco is really more of a vacation with a side job (and, admittedly, pretty close to home for the Cobbs). It’s not even a job in dream share. Just a regular old heist. Arthur’s idea. Dom had told him a few weeks after the inception that he wanted to go back to a regular team, as risky as it was in this business. Mostly, he wanted to keep Ariadne and train her up. And Eames was sort of already part of the package. From what Dom says, Arthur had agreed after four days of weighing every possible outcome of this arrangement. Of course. So, the heist in San Francisco was more a team-building exercise than anything else. The children were going to spend the day and night they were pulling off the job with their grandparents.

They’re both angels. Eames remembers the well-behaved baby Pippa was, but he’s honestly surprised that it carried through toddlerhood to young childhood. Most kids grew out of that he assumed. James follows his sister’s example in every way. And when one of them so much as fusses too much, all they need is a reminder that they might disturb Arthur if they get too noisy and they both become quiet as mice. They adore Arthur.

Dom letting Mal go released an enormous weight from both him and Arthur. Eames can see the wistful longing Arthur still gets in his eye when Pippa does something particularly Mal-like, but he let her fade into memory long before Dom. It was Dom’s guilt that had been ravaging him. He’s not as intensely sharp anymore as he had been for the past few years. Though still tailored, still slicked, still shiny, he’s no longer viciously severe. He’s likely never going to return to the way he looked before Los Angeles and the jump and the terrible, terrible memorial. Having a best friend torn away will do that to a man. But it’s an improvement.

Eames is coming back from tailing a security guard one evening when he hears laughter. It’s the quiet giggling of children who think they’re being discrete while an adult pretends that they can’t be found. As he steps into the small apartment Arthur found for them to stay in, he hears a very distinct “shhh!” from the hall closet and the sound of scampering feet and a thump as someone small throws themselves down on the floor in the living room. It’s James’ voice, he can tell. He strips off his jacket and pulls open the door, expecting a small blond head to pop up and shout at him. He only gets another suppressed giggle. He steps into the closet a bit further, mindful of the obvious child-shaped lump to the left side, and hangs his jacket. Puzzled, but unwilling to have them give up their game, he retreats and goes toward the living room.

Pippa is on the floor with Ariadne, working through the mazes Ari draws for her on graph paper. Arthur is sitting at the desk in the corner, going over hours of video footage to make sure the security teams keep a schedule as perfect as his own. Ari looks up and doesn’t manage to hide her smile behind her hand quickly enough. Pippa follows her gaze and just blinks up at him innocently, her face too carefully blank to be an expression she just happened upon by herself. Arthur has been spending too much time with these children.

Eames cuts his gaze to Ari where her shoulders are shaking a bit with silent laughter. He smiles, ready to be in on the joke and asks, “What is it?” Pippa turns back to her maze, but the corner of her mouth quirks. Arthur doesn’t turn.

“Have you checked your pockets, Mr. Eames?” Ari asks once she’s pushed back her laughter. Eames frowns. And then remembers the child-shaped lump hiding in the hall closet. He digs into his left pocket and comes up empty.

“Bloody—” he begins and Ari dissolves into giggles. Pippa laughs along delightedly. Arthur swivels in his chair and Eames feels every breath in his body get sucked away all at once. Arthur is smiling again.

“You’ve just been had by a four-year-old, Mr. Eames,” Arthur says smugly. Eames is too caught up staring at Arthur’s smile to notice James slip back into the room. But when he dances past with Eames’ wallet, Eames, naturally, goes after him.

(Cobb comes back just as Eames catches James and sends him into a fit of giggles as he tickles him. He looks at Ari and Pippa lying on the floor with stacks of mazes around them, Eames gently holding James on the couch and pretending to have trouble retrieving his wallet from his small hands, and Arthur sitting at his desk watching them all with a small smile still on his lips and correctly deduces what’s happened. He has very strong words with Arthur about the skills he’s teaching his children, but his stern squint is marred by the fact that he can’t help smiling either. Eames remembers suddenly a picture Mal sent him of Arthur with James and Phillipa on his lap as he cleaned his favorite gun and the caption that said if Arthur didn’t teach her children to pick pockets before the age of five, she had made a grave mistake in naming him their godfather. It’s the first beautiful memory he’s had of Mal since she jumped.)


	4. Madrid

Arthur disappears before Eames wakes up and this time he can’t trace him.


	5. Mombasa

Eames always returns to Mombasa. It’s one of his favorite places in the world and if he were ever to settle down, he thinks he’ll do it in Mombasa. It’s also a good place to get spectacularly wasted and not think about the egregious mistakes he’s made. Namely, one in particular involving a bottle of tequila, a returned poker chip, and Arthur. Because everything in his life for the past ten years always seems to come back to Arthur.

It’s Yusuf who finally gets the whole story out of him, albeit fragmented and half unintelligible around an alcohol-laden tongue. Madrid had been another extraction, back to the basics to practice the teamwork they’d worked so hard to achieve in San Francisco. Yusuf stops the story early on to express his displeasure at being left out. Eames decks him and continues, feeling marginally satisfied at working out just a bit of aggression. Still, it wasn’t a simple job by any means. It was challenging for the whole team in different ways. Somehow, Arthur had found them a job that preyed on everyone’s weaknesses, forcing the other members of the team to step up and cover a weakness with a strength. That was probably the most ingenious part of the job and only further proof that Arthur could do anything.

In a hotel room, after celebrating a job very well done, Eames met Arthur and they had celebrated in their own way. Arthur didn’t laugh at all, still too harrowed by the past years, but he did smile enough to give Eames hope. To let him know he was healing. Arthur had let him pull off every piece of that ridiculous suit and pour tequila down his throat as he—. Here, Yusuf cuts him off sharply. Skip ahead, he begs. Eames sighs dramatically but obliges after another long drink of some unnamed liquor he procured. After, they had just lain together on the sheets, wrung-out and exhausted, but still too wound-up to sleep. Together, passing back and forth like teenagers, they went through an entire pack of cigarettes. When the last had burned out and been tossed into the ashtray, Arthur had gotten up and gone to his travel bag.

He came back to bed holding a nondescript wooden box. Eames could only stare. He had missed his chip, of course. He’d stolen in from a casino the very first time he had visited Monte Carlo. He’d been barely eighteen and it was his first time stealing something larger than a wallet from someone more important than a London business man. He had sat in that casino for three hours before working up the nerve to do his job and when he had what he came in for and was on his way out, he swiped a single red poker chip from a loud-mouth at a blackjack table. When he wasn’t caught, he deemed the chip his lucky charm. It had never failed him.

Arthur had presented him the box, admitting that he watched Eames leave it with Mal. He took it back, he explained, because Mal never needed good luck. She was born lucky. He took it because Mal had been his lucky charm and, selfishly, he needed a new one when she was gone. He took it because he knew it meant something to Eames and he thought he would maybe return it when the time was right. And Eames had looked at him, backlit by the sun rising outside the window, looking rumpled and lovely and so, so earnest, and he had said the first thing that came to mind. At this point, Eames drains the bottle and promptly passes out across Yusuf’s lap.

He wakes up to the godawful smell of Yusuf’s magical hangover cure (which works miracles but never stops tasting like asphalt, gasoline, and toothpaste and orange juice) with no memory of the night before. It’s quite nice actually and he’s willing to risk having to drink more of Yusuf’s miracle shakes so he doesn’t have to keep thinking about Madrid.


	6. Yakutsk

Dom hasn’t heard from Arthur in months. That’s what he tells him over the phone anyway. Arthur disappeared in Madrid and apparently hasn’t been found since. Dom’s upset for obvious reasons, but he also doesn’t believe Arthur is dead. When Eames asks why all he gets is a snort and a derisive “It’s Arthur.” Dom hesitates in hanging up after delivering that one-liner and after a moment tentatively asks if Eames would like to speak to the children. They call him Uncle Eames, to Dom’s unending chagrin, and practically tackle each other to get to the phone when he calls according to Arthur. He declines and hears Dom lie to James when he asks who’s on the phone.

Just before hanging up, Dom says in a weary voice, “If Arthur decides to turn up for anyone, it’ll be you. You should keep an eye out. Mal may rise from the grave just to drag us both back down with her if we let her best friend drop off the face of the earth.” And then he hangs up. No pressure.

After Yusuf finally smacked some sense into him (quite literally and Eames is actually rather impressed with the backhand the man has got) back in Mombasa and told him to stop ruining his liver, Eames had pouted a bit, jumped on a plane and somehow ended up in the coldest city in the world. Because what better way to both punish himself and get some space to think than by freezing his bollocks off in Russia. He spends most of his time inside the hotel room with the heat cranked up as high as it will go. When he does venture out, it’s only long enough to get through one cigarette. Beyond one, he finds, his fingers legitimately turn blue even in his mittens and that is extremely concerning. Clearly, growing up in South Africa made him completely incapable of dealing with the cold.

He knows he won’t be able to actually find Arthur. If Arthur is trying not to be found, he’s not going to be found. It’s one of those funny little quirks he has, on the same level as being able to hit a moving target from twenty meters and running out on his bedmates when they tell him they love him. Dom knows this as well as Eames, so he doesn’t call to check on his progress. They both know they just need to wait this out. Arthur will turn up. He’s done this before and he always turns up.

The first time, Eames had gone mental when Arthur disappeared. It had only been for five weeks, but it was well into their working relationship and Eames was confused when he could find no trace of Arthur even existing on the earth. In the four years, by then, that he had been working with Arthur, he’d thought that he could track Arthur fairly well, even took pride in it. So of course he assumed the worst when Arthur vanished. He’d called the Cobbs all in a tizzy and Mal had only given one of her throaty, full-bellied laughs and asked, “Do you think he is dead, Mr. Eames?” Eames had given her an affirmative.

“Arthur wouldn’t just die on me, Mr. Eames, I assure you,” Mal had told him once her laughter had petered out. “He knows better than that. Give him a month or two. He’ll turn up. He does this sometimes.”

He did turn up, as she had said. He showed up at a warehouse in Berlin and sat down at an empty table as if nothing had happened. Eames had stared at him. Dom had clapped him on the back. Mal just bent and placed a kiss on each cheek, murmuring something in French that had Arthur dimpling. He had glanced up and met Eames’ eye and only grinned and shook his head, looking back up at Mal. He had the distinct impression at that moment that Arthur and Mal were laughing at him.

But this time, this time it’s been over four months. The longest Arthur ever disappeared for was ten weeks. They had just wrapped up a particularly grueling job that hadn’t been easy on any of them. Things had been said and accusations flung about and when it was all over, the Cobbs went off to Honolulu and Eames had gone back to Mombasa and Arthur had gone to wherever he went when he fell off the map and had, thankfully, returned without the urge to shoot anything that moved. Eames remembers that time now as he cocoons himself in blankets and browses through world news, looking for any hint of Arthur’s work in the crime articles (fruitlessly, of course, Arthur is so good no one would even know he’d committed a crime if he decided he’d like to). He hadn’t worried about Arthur then and it’s pointless to worry about him now. Arthur doesn’t just drop dead. Only reappears.


	7. Durban

Eames goes home. Another two months have passed with no sign of Arthur and Yusuf told him that he’s still mad at him for the little drinking binge thing that happened after Madrid so he’s not allowed back in Mombasa for a good long time. He hasn’t been home in years, but it’s surprisingly easy to fall back into it. He missed the beaches and buildings and most of all his very first apartment. The first thing he ever forged was an ID that said he was old enough to buy the one-bedroom apartment where he started teaching himself how to steal more than watches from people’s wrists.

The apartment is unchanged. There’s a layer of dust over everything, but underneath it still smells like home. When this is all over, when he’s found Arthur and gotten some closure, he decides he’ll come back home. No one knows where he grew up, no one knows he has an apartment here at all. Arthur might. But apparently Arthur wants nothing to do with him. (He ignores the way that thought feels untrue even in his own mind.) He’ll come back home because he’s going to need a fresh start and it seems a lovely parallel to start again here.

The first thing he does after clearing away the dust and settling back in is call the children. Dom has tried to get him to talk to them over the past few months, but Eames has denied every time. Somehow they understand that Uncle Eames is very, very close to their beloved godfather and whenever he calls and Arthur hasn’t in a while, they ask if he knows where Arthur is. He hasn’t had the heart to tell them that he doesn’t know. But he misses them and if Arthur won’t contact them, someone else should. If only to stop them from turning squinty-eyed like their father.

“Uncle Eames, Uncle Eames!” Pippa shrills into the phone when she picks up. There’s the sound of running feet and a sudden scuffle.

“Let me, Pip!” James’ unmistakable voice demands. Heavy footsteps indicate the arrival of Dom and Eames is put on speaker. The children being speaking at once, each trying to be heard over the other and getting progressively louder until Eames has to hold the phone away from his ear. He can just barely hear Dom laughing in the background. Wanker.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down there,” Eames says, laughing. They quiet, but Eames continues to smile.

They ask where he’s been and he tells them about how cold it is in Russia and how sunny it is in Mombasa. He promises to take them both someday and assures them that presents are on the way. Pippa tells him about starting the second grade and proudly tells him that she walks James to his first grade classroom all the way down the hall before she goes to her own class. James is enthusiastic about being out of kindergarten and they scramble to tell him horror stories about the school bus. But eventually they run out of new things to tell him and finally ask the dreaded question.

“Uncle Eames, is Arthur with you?” It’s Pippa who asks, her voice very small but very hopeful. Eames swallows and runs his fingers over the smooth surface of his poker chip.

“No, pet, he’s not,” he tells her steadily.

James asks even more quietly than Pippa had, more hesitantly, “Do you know where he is?”

“I’m so sorry, pigeon,” is all Eames can say. He hears Pippa sigh sadly and James sniffles.

“Can you tell him we love him?” she asks, “If you find him?”

“And we’re sorry for whatever we did!” James adds hastily. Eames has to turn his face away from the phone so they can’t hear his choked half-sob. Arthur is breaking the children’s hearts as surely as he’s broken Eames’.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, pet,” Eames tells them quietly, “Arthur loves you both very, very much and I’m sure he misses you. But you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But you’ll still tell him?” Pippa asks, begging for confirmation. Eames nods.

“I will. And I’ll tell him all about the exciting things you guys are doing that he’s missing. We’ll make him right jealous, we will. He’ll be so upset he missed it he might never leave you again,” he says.

He hears the smile in Pippa’s voice when she says, “Good.” They chat for a bit longer before Dom’s voice calls them to dinner. The two of them chorus their goodbyes and love-you’s and hang up. Eames resolves to find Arthur. If not for himself, then for the two angels in Los Angeles who desperately need their godfather back.


	8. Agra

Arthur is in Singapore. Arthur is alive and well and in Singapore. And he’s called them in for a job. It’s been almost ten months since Madrid. For the past two, Ari has called all of them every day to see if they’ve heard from him. Yusuf has burned through several favors to try to find an answer, Eames had torn his hair out when he found nothing, and Dom had only grown shorter and shorter on the phone when asked. Eames is just sitting down to lunch when he gets the text. It comes to a burner phone he got only a week and a half ago upon his arrival in India. It’s impossible to not know who the text is from. Dom, despite being the world’s foremost extractor (even now that he’s mostly settled down and working almost exclusively out of Los Angeles) and pioneering the complicated and fantastical world of dream sharing, has still somehow been bested by any and all technology. Ari still uses emoji’s and exclamation points. Yusuf prefers not to text at all. So, the text can only be from one person.                

> _Singapore. $80,000 up front. Inception._

He’s angry at first, furious. Arthur can’t just drop off the face of the earth for almost a year and then abruptly call them in for a job. It’s unacceptable, not to mention rude, to simply act as if nothing has happened. Eames is very sorely tempted to just stay in Agra and tell Arthur to go fuck himself when he realizes something. Arthur texted his burner. Not his personal cell, the number of which is only known by Dom, Ari, Yusuf, and Arthur. No, he texted his burner. Which means even underground, Arthur was still tracking him. Still tracking all of them, no doubt. And he remembers something else. An epiphany that had struck him in the shower a couple months ago, not long after he’d arrived in Durban. He’s still peeved that the first thing Arthur decides to text them all is a call for a job, so he finishes his lunch before getting himself on the first flight to Singapore.


	9. Singapore

It’s impossible not to greet Arthur with enthusiasm. None of them can pretend that he wasn’t gone for ten months. Dom arrives with the kids who jump on him and don’t let go of him even as Ari runs over to hug him. (The kids are put under the care of Mal’s father and bundled on a plane to Paris to be collected by their father and, pinky-swear, Arthur as soon as the job is finished.) Even Dom squeezes in a brief hug and Arthur smiles at him as he shakes Yusuf’s hand firmly. He turns to Eames and it’s all he can do not to sweep Arthur into a bruising kiss. He steps in close, fully aware that he’s breeched Arthur’s radius and breathes, “Hello, darling,” across his mouth. Arthur closes his eyes for the barest second and Eames watches his lips twitch, his tongue flicking out to taste the words. Eames shakes Arthur’s hand and steps away, dragging his fingers along the inside of Arthur’s wrist as he pulls back.

Arthur smiles at them all, sets the PASIV on a table, and turns to his whiteboard. The reunion ends that quickly. No one is upset by it. It’s too good having Arthur back.


	10. Oslo, Glasgow, Milan, Sydney, Tangerang, Katiola

Eames gets the game in Milan. He’s not sure what the point is, but the object is clear. Catch me if you can. Arthur style. After Singapore, Eames almost had a heart attack thinking he’d gone underground yet again, but he only lost track of him for five days before he showed up in Oslo. By the time Eames got there, though, he was gone. He complained to Dom all the way to the airport to get to Glasgow and Dom had only laughed, clearly understanding the game much more quickly than Eames.

In Glasgow, he gives Eames much more of a chance than in Oslo. Oslo had only been the staging area, probably a test to see if Eames would follow at all. He did. So Arthur rewards him by letting him catch sight of him in Glasgow. It’s nothing so obvious as actually seeing him, Arthur is too clever for that. Instead, it’s a pocket square left on a table in a restaurant when Eames ducks into the loo. It’s the flash of a robin’s egg blue suit jacket between the doors of a neighboring elevator as Eames steps into the lobby of his hotel. It’s the diamond and platinum cufflink slipped into his pocket when he shrugs off his coat and tosses it over the back of a chair outside a café before ducking in to order his coffee. (The full set clink together satisfyingly in the pocket of his trousers now and if he ever finds Arthur he may even give them back, find himself a new reality to hold on to.)

He’s gone for three days before one of his least favorite and most obvious aliases shows him to be in Milan. When Eames has tickets to a Valentino fashion show arrive with his room service one night, he finally understands. He knows he won’t see Arthur at the fashion show, but he knows, also, that Arthur will undoubtedly be there. He goes to the show and gets a ticket stub for a new movie stuck to the bottom of his cup of tea. Arthur seems to have decided that psychological torture is an excellent way to test Eames’ devotion to him because the movie is atrocious. Still, his prize is a receipt to a very expensive tailor’s where there’s a jacket made of material much more suited to warmer weather waiting for him. He’s on a plane to Sydney within the next two days.

Sydney is infinitely more fun than Milan was. Arthur lets him tour a museum, a temporary exhibit of Rembrandt portraits that he quite enjoys, and allows him a glimpse of eggshell trousers as they round the corner away from the museum. He has him climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge where it’s difficult to leave a clue for this little scavenger hunt, but is fun all the same when Eames whoops loudly into the wind at the crest of the bridge. And no visit to Sydney would be complete without the opera house. Arthur provides him with orchestra seats and Eames thinks he sees a familiar shadow in one of the higher boxes.

The pattern is the same in Tangerang, but different as well. Eames can tell he’s coming closer. When he sees bits of Arthur this time, it’s not just a bit of fabric that could belong to anyone but Eames knows belong to Arthur. This time, it’s a pale hand flagging down a cab. It’s a head of slicked back dark hair bobbing ahead of him on his way to Arthur’s next clue. It’s the lingering smell of Arthur’s cologne on the jacket he collects after a few drinks in a nightclub. He’s getting closer and with every new clue, Eames knows he was right.

In Katiola, he sees Arthur. The whole man, not just an errant part of him. They spend a week running through the city, Eames actually trying to catch him now, showing up to destinations in as short a time as possible and watching exits whenever he’s near one. One day, though, Arthur leaves him no new clue. He’s heading back to his hotel after souvenir shopping for James and Phillipa when he happens to glance up. Arthur’s standing at a corner, hands in the pockets of his pale gray suit, smiling. He nods slightly when Eames catches his eye and even though Eames doesn’t look away, doesn’t blink, he disappears when a car passes in front of him. But the game is over now. All Eames has to do is wait for Arthur to choose a place to stop.


End file.
